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Dec. 29, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:29:12

"What Is My Fetish Trying to Tell Me?" Freedomain Call In Show

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	Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
	I hope you're doing well. So I wanted to talk a little bit about things that I have learned about the poor growing up as I did poor.
	And I grew up poor in a variety of locations.
	I lived in London, England, of course.
	I lived in Canada. I lived in Whitby, you name it.
	And I just really did manage to Learn a lot about the poor, having seen them in a variety of places, and what makes them tick and what the genuine and general problems are.
	So the first thing I think to recognize about the poor is that they are often very intelligent, but what generally they lack is wisdom.
	These are big generalities, so there'll be lots that hits the mark and lots that doesn't.
	But what they don't have is a wisdom.
	There tends to be a lot of impulsivity.
	There tends to be a lot of vanity among the poor, which is why they convert any excess income not into savings and so on, but into unnecessary expenditures, vanity expenditures, consumables, and so on.
	And they have a tough time holding up and gathering onto resources as a whole.
	That's a big problem.
	The impulsivity is a big problem.
	Lack of consequences of actions is a big problem.
	And the mindset is a big issue as well, because what happens with the poor is they tend to glamorize.
	What they're doing and what they're going through.
	The big problem is not dysfunction.
	The big problem, as I talked about not too long ago in the I Hate Cool video, the problem is when you begin to glamorize what it is that you're doing.
	Like, I'm not poor. I'm authentic.
	I'm not poor.
	I refuse to be a wage slave.
	I'm not poor. I refuse to bow down to the man.
	All that kind of stuff. And that is where the real entrapment begins.
	Somebody who is afraid of trying to succeed.
	Like I had a friend when I was growing up, good singer, good guitarist, you know, loved to write songs, talented and all that kind of stuff.
	But what happened was he was so cynical that anybody who was a successful musician ended up in his mind being a terrible sellout, like just a wretched and terrible sellout.
	And because of that, he kind of stymied his own capacity for success because he had defined being a successful musician as being a sellout.
	I remember him making fun of, you know, pretty good band, Tears for Fears, with some very talented singer-songwriters.
	And he was like, one of the big albums was Songs from the Big Chair.
	And, you know, these guys had 80s hairstyles.
	And he's like, Songs from the Big Hair, you know, it was his sort of big cynical thing.
	And he would get very cynical about, you know, there was a remake of Dancing in the Streets, which is the old Motown song.
	And I think it was Van Halen or something like that.
	And he was like, yeah, these people, they think Van Halen wrote that song.
	Like all this kind of superiority that went along with that.
	And because of that cynicism, he could not unreservedly throw himself into pursuing...
	His love of music, because to be successful was to be a sellout, and the cynicism was, I think, what really trapped him in that.
	So, all right, let's talk a little bit more about that later.
	I'm just here for a call-in show, so I did want to check in with people.
	I wanted to wish you, of course, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, and happy Hanukkah, and all that kind of good stuff.
	Kwanzaa, too, I guess, if that's your gig.
	Let's move on to the next caller who wants to talk about the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Risseau, I do believe.
	Gary, is it Gary?
	Are you on the line? Yes, I'm here, Stéphane.
	Hey, thanks for your patience, man.
	How are you doing? I'm okay, I'm okay.
	That last caller had a lot of ground to cover, and I appreciate that.
	The only way I can sum it up is the second law of thermodynamics.
	From order to disorder.
	That seems to be how society goes these days.
	Yeah, yeah, we disintegrate and reintegrate.
	I wanted to get your take on my view as a Christian.
	Now, I lived my whole life without Christ until age 33, and when I discovered him, I went back in my history of education and And I reviewed a certain French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or as they say, Rousseau.
	He held a maxim in his personal values that is true in its application to our sinful nature.
	He, as an unconverted soul, held a view where he summed it up saying, what one does is for oneself, no exception.
	Everything man does is self-serving by nature.
	But when we carry this principle to the issue of God's salvation and the principle of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, Rousseau, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and before them Plato and Aristotle, to me, brother, are exposed as the godless thinkers they were.
	To say that a soldier who throws his body over a grenade to save his fellow soldiers is selfish?
	I'm sorry, brother, that is fundamentally a moral thought.
	This thinking is satanic to me at its core.
	But this is precisely how immoral thinking works its way into our society.
	When we compare today's values to those of a generation ago, it is as different as night and day to me.
	I'm 62 now, and I've seen quite a bit, and I'm sure you have too, brother.
	In essence, one long step usually leads to another.
	The epitome of this self-centered philosophy is exposed when we look at the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ at this Christmas time.
	When Christ, of his own volition, Went to the cross on Calvary.
	This atheistic philosophy accuses him of doing it selfishly to satisfy his own greedy nature that we all share.
	To me, nothing more foolish could ever be associated with God's efforts to save man from sin.
	This assertion accuses Jesus Christ of being guilty of sharing man's sinful, egocentric behavior.
	To me, Stefan, nothing could be further from the truth.
	But this is what sin has walked in the hearts of men.
	And I would like to know your take on this as a fellow believer.
	Well, as far as selfishness goes, there is the problem of our animal natures.
	And the problem with our animal natures is that animals are fundamentally driven by self-interest.
	And if they appear to be acting for the group as a whole, it's usually because it's a better way for their genes to survive.
	You know, like if the soldier ants are out there doing their soldiering, it's better for the survival of the ant genes as a whole.
	So when it comes to selfishness, our animal nature draws us in that direction almost inexorably.
	And when it comes to human motivation, we do have to have a reason behind what it is that we do.
	And so when someone does something, whatever it is, then we assume that they have a motive for doing it, that they expect to gain some sort of benefit for doing it.
	So the soldier... Who throws himself on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers, we would say, well, for him, that is a benevolent act, or maybe he just hates being a soldier so much he'd rather blow himself up and wants to do it for a good cause.
	But he must, weighing on the balance, he must view that as something that is beneficial or that he's willing to do.
	And so you can look, it's sort of almost like a tautology, you can look at what human beings do and you say, well, because he's doing that, he must be doing that because...
	He considers it beneficial or positive or it serves him in some manner, even if it's death.
	He would rather himself die to save his fellow, whatever, right?
	So that's a very cynical way of looking at humanity.
	And of course, the whole point of humanity is we're really supposed to surmount what the animals do.
	I mean, we have this amazing capacity to reason and conceptualize and view consequences of our actions and plan and defer gratification and all that kind of stuff.
	And that should give us More choice, more value, more heft, more weight, more consideration of others than mere animals have.
	And one of the things that I find powerful about Christianity is it wrestles with the mammal immediate self-interest, right?
	I mean, you give animals food and they'll just eat it.
	And you give them opportunities to have sex when they're in heat and they'll just take it.
	And Christianity, of course, attempts to counterbalance The mammal selfishness and greed and lust, which is unfair to say that a lion is greedy because it doesn't really have the capacity to not be greedy.
	It's like calling it a murderer for killing a zebra.
	That's how it lives.
	And so to me, one of the powerful things about Christianity, hang on, one of the powerful things about Christianity is it takes this big, like we got the seesaw, right?
	There's a seesaw, and on one side is the evolutionary greed of the mere mammal, and Christianity on the other side puts divine imperatives and the example of Jesus and says, listen, this has got to have some weight in your calculations, more than just the blind lust of mammalian pleasure-seeking, which is reducing our powerful capacities to that of us.
	of a very cunning mammal.
	On the other side of the seesaw, by gosh, we've got to put something Something more than your individual greed.
	Now, Rousseau, of course, had this idea of the general will, this collectivist idea, and that was what you were supposed to submerge yourself to, and of course the general will always manifests itself in the power of the state, which makes you basically a worker slave to the state.
	But what Christianity does is it takes our capacity for eternity, our capacity for infinity, our capacity for abstractions and conceptions and so on, and balances with the divine, with the example of Jesus.
	It balances.
	The immense dead weight of evolutionary greed that characterizes our animal self.
	And since Christianity has lost its power in the West to a large degree, you can see this animal nature just taking over.
	You can see this empty lust, sexuality, greed, materialism, hoarding, political power.
	Now it's just I mean, I've certainly tried to countervail that with philosophy, but I'm not going to...
	Say that, you know, one guy in his studio can outdo thousands of years of Christianity, but that's sort of my take on it.
	What do you think? Okay.
	The greatest lesson I can share with you, Stéphane, and I've been listening to you for many, many years now, and I've always complimented your wisdom in your work, and I applaud you because your voice is rare, brother.
	And I'm surprised Fox and other...
	TV stations don't have you on all the time.
	But that's to their shame.
	But when I contrast the love of man versus the love of God, I go to John 21 after Christ's resurrection, and he faced off with Peter.
	And those who know the story, Peter denied Jesus three times.
	So Jesus addressed this moment in Peter's life.
	And allow me to quote this from John 3, 19 to 21.
	So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me with unselfish love more than these, the other disciples?
	He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee with a limited selfish love.
	Two different Greek words.
	One is agape, the other is phileo.
	Jesus saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
	He saith unto him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me with a love that seeks the other's well-being, regardless of the cost to yourself?
	He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee, with a futile love that exerts in vain.
	He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
	He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me with a limited, selfish love?
	Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me with a failing love?
	He saith unto him, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee, thou knowest that I love thee, with the only love I am capable of.
	Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
	Now we come to the day of Pentecost, right?
	And the Spirit of Christ comes to the hearts of men, and He brings with Him agape.
	That's what we are promised through the Gospel.
	And without agape, no one will survive to eternal life.
	And that's my summation of the whole message of Christ to this world.
	Well, well summed.
	Well summed. I appreciate the call.
	And we have to find a way to bring back the balance of our higher natures versus our animal natures.
	And Rousseau, you know, was straight in with the animal.
	He was straight into, you know, that we started in paradise.
	There was this radical egalitarianism in the state of nature.
	And then we were all corrupted by civilization.
	And the only chance we have for equality of opportunity and equality under the law is...
	Less violence, less state, less power.
	And the idea that we somehow lost our Garden of Eden through civilization is, well, it's ghastly.
	You know, we never had a Garden of Eden.
	I mean, evolutionarily speaking, we crawled out of blank, blind, murderous mammalian nature.
	And we have tried to hold on to some scraps of humanity that seem to be continually torn out of our grasp by greed and envy and resentment and the sins that we used to fight and seem to have surrendered to.
	So, yeah, thanks for the call. I really, really appreciate that, and let's move on.
	Mark, you wanted to talk about what it says here, the ordered sequence of values.
	I'm not sure that translates too well to anything I know what you're talking about.
	Perhaps you'd like to enlighten me.
	Thank you, Stefan. Hi.
	So, if one has a series of values they're pursuing, they can all be consistent and congruent with each other.
	You know, the fundamental one being like, say, food and shelter.
	That you have to. If there's food and shelter, they're both things to pursue.
	They're both necessary good things.
	And I'll get to the real reason why I'm talking about this.
	Is that sometimes, based upon the circumstances of the individual or the society the person is in, that these have to be pursued in a particular sequence in order to make sense.
	You could say about the food and shelter one, that you don't pursue shelter unless you have no food first, which would be kind of the obvious, you know, reductive reasoning for that.
	But in the modern day here, and I think this might have reflected something that the caller, that Tubac was discussing or getting into, is this problem of immigration and populations and such.
	And I deal a lot with the libertarian world and have been for many, many years.
	What I found that is a problem is that the people of libertarian mindset value both free movement of peoples and free markets, and these are all great things.
	Yet in our current political movement towards something better or solving problems, that I'm having difficulty discussing with them the need to eliminate the welfare state before one can truly pursue the ultimate virtuous goal of free people moving across the world without governmental interventions or restrictions.
	So I was wondering what you had to say about I know the discussion about, you know, simultaneous interest, that it may seem evil not to pursue them at this time, like, well, you know, for free people and free borders right now, we can have that right now, but then it would lead to ultimate destruction, since the entire world would come here, and then, of course, we would perish.
	Again, that's my opinion, but I think that's probably something that you might not disagree with.
	Okay, so it's – because this is something that I get – I've seen commented on quite a bit, which is this libertarian argument that says, well, we've got to have open borders because if you have borders, that's a violation of the non-aggression principle because people are just crossing from one person to another, one place to another, and the lines are arbitrary.
	And yeah, I've made that case years ago that it's moving from one place to another.
	So I get that saying, well, people can't cross arbitrary lines in the grounds of violation of the non-aggression principle, right?
	Is that sort of where you're coming from?
	Well, I mean, that's the argument that, you know, my brother in that world put up and they said, well, here's that value.
	I said, well, the other value is supporting a rational, you know, A society that supports individual responsibility and property rights.
	And in the midst of all this, we have the current cloud above us as the government, which is stealing and appropriating for these people who cross these arbitrary borders.
	And we say, well, is the first value to pursue the defeat of that structure and defeat of that mindset that the violation of one's property Right.
	Well, I mean, there is a way of looking at the state in a libertarian context, because we have the state.
	The state is the primary economic agent in society, both because of its money printing abilities and its control over the economy and its collection of trillions and trillions of dollars of taxes.
	The state is the primary agency, economic agency in society.
	So people, forget about immigration and so on, but just look at people who have paid into that system.
	People who have, let's say you're a 40-year-old, you've been working since you were 15 or 20, so you've got 20, 25 years of paying into a system.
	Now the government has used that money.
	Let's just look at the typical scenario that could be defended.
	The government has used that money to build roads, to build an entire infrastructure, to build plumbing, to build schools, to...
	Whatever, like I mean just telephone lines, you name it, right?
	The government has used your money to build this infrastructure And because you're born there and you have worked there for a certain amount of time, you have a democratic form of ownership in that infrastructure because you have paid for that infrastructure.
	Now, this is not how the free market would organize it, but given that this is the way it's organized now, I mean, we have to deal with the world that is, not the world that we would like.
	I mean, otherwise I could be a cancer researcher and say, well...
	I've cured cancer because in the future I think cancer will be cured.
	It's like, well, no, can we deal with the fact that cancer is not cured and work from that standpoint, right?
	So we have to work with the system that is.
	So in the system that is, the taxation, the redistributionist welfare state, the entire infrastructure of the country is owned by the taxpayers, right? And given that all of that infrastructure, and this is the legal system and the prisons and the police and the courts, like all of that, right?
	It's all owned for, all paid for by the taxpayers, right?
	So given that the taxpayers own the infrastructure and the resources of the country, then having people move to that country, take advantage of all of those resources without paying one thin dime in taxes, well, that's a form of theft, right? That's a form of theft.
	Now, you could, of course, argue, and people will, and they'll say, yes, but what about the people, maybe they never got a job, and they're on disability, or they're on welfare.
	It's like, yeah, okay, I get all of that.
	What if they're single moms? And I get all of that.
	Absolutely. And what happened was...
	When these programs, the welfare state and so on, were put into place, the argument was something like this.
	This is what people accepted, and this is what they voted for, and this is what people still accept and continue to vote for.
	What they say is they say the welfare state is for the very small minority of people who largely through no fault of their own have ended up economically unproductive.
	So the welfare state is for some kid born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
	I mean the mom's a total jerk for drinking but it's not the kid's fault that he got fetal alcohol syndrome or maybe he has reduced IQ because his parents drank – his mom drank while he was pregnant or whatever or I don't know.
	So the welfare state is put into place for the small minority of people who through no fault of their own have ended up economically unproductive and we have chosen as a voting electorate to not rely on mere charity but to have a redistributionist state.
	That is what it's for.
	Now, if people then come to the country and go on welfare, While having never paid into the system, then they are a net transfer out of that system, right?
	It is a net transfer because you're using the power of the state to transfer money from the existing domestic population of a country to your own pocket, and you've never paid into the system.
	Now, if you think of insurance, insurance you pay into and then you withdraw if there's an emergency, right?
	You pay into, you know, $1,000 a year, $500 a year for your home insurance, and then if you get robbed or your house burns down, then you can pull out of it, right?
	Were to go to the insurance company, and you were to say, oh, my house burnt down, I need you to buy me a new house, and you faked or somehow convinced them that you were a customer, and later it turned out that you weren't a customer, well, you would go to jail for insurance fraud because you never paid into that system, but you're taking out of it.
	You're taking out of that system.
	So we would accept that as illegitimate and unjust and immoral to attempt to withdraw from a system you never paid into.
	We would also, if the game was somehow rigged, in other words, if the random element was taken out, there was an old Sanford and Son from many years ago, which was a fairly dank and low-rent comedy.
	I think in the 70s or 80s.
	I don't know. Anyway, so there was this...
	Samford was running...
	It was this guy who ran a junkyard, and he ran a lottery or a raffle, right?
	And it's like, oh, the raffle winner gets a television, right?
	And it turns out that there was never a television, and no one could win.
	But because each individual didn't know that no one else won, everyone thought, oh, I'm just unlucky.
	I lost, but I'm sure somebody won.
	Now that, of course, is a form of fraud and a form of theft because you're taking money from people on the promise that they might win a television, but there's no television to be won, so that's fraudulent.
	In other words, the welfare state was supposed to be for the occasional accident of life.
	You know, some woman, she has kids, she has a husband.
	The husband was just on his way to mail out the life insurance and he just got hit by a bus and like, wow, that's really bad luck.
	And so the welfare state was supposed to be very minimal.
	Very minimal, very rare, very, wow, that's way off the beaten path, that's way off any kind of bell curve, and we'll take care of all of that, right?
	In other words, the element of chance had to be there.
	Now, if the element of chance is removed, in other words, if somebody moves to America, say...
	Knowing that they're going to take out of the system, that they're not going to pay into it, or at least they're not going to pay into it nearly as much as they're going to take out, then that's no longer a random situation because it's with pre-thought and it's pre-ordained that they're going to be taking more out of the system than they're going to be putting in, right? And, you know, some places like almost three-quarters of immigrants end up on welfare, right?
	So that is not how the welfare state was designed.
	Like if the welfare state was sold as, well, anyone can move to America and can take money out of your pocket To the tunes of tens of thousands of dollars a year through the power of the state.
	And it's not for taking care of the poor who are accidentally poor or unjustly poor or randomly poor.
	But it's going to be a giant magnet for everyone in the world to come and pick your pocket from here to eternity.
	People would have said, well, that's not how it's sold.
	That's not how it's sold. And that's not how people think the welfare state exists.
	And so if you look at these variety of arguments, right, the lottery argument or the raffle argument, the insurance argument, the taxpayers own the resources argument, the need for randomness in the welfare state, in other words, if it's preordained, if it's preordained, then that's bad, right?
	You have to have the element of uncertainty for any of these insurance systems to work, and welfare is supposed to be a form of insurance, like unemployment insurance is supposed to be a form of insurance.
	There has to be a random element, which is why if you take out fire insurance on your business and then you burn your business down, you're fraudulent.
	If you take out life insurance and you kill yourself, you don't get paid life insurance because that's not a random action.
	So randomness and uncertainty need to be at the basis of all insurance systems and the way that the welfare state was sold to the general population was as a form of insurance.
	A form of insurance.
	In Canada, it's a social insurance number.
	S-I-N. Social insurance number.
	Social security number.
	It's supposed to provide you security.
	Well, you don't sit there, burn your own business down, try and get a million dollars out of the insurance company and say, hey man, I'm just trying to get some security.
	It's like, no, you're being fraudulent.
	So if somebody enters into the situation of taking money from the general purse through welfare, And they did so knowing ahead of time that they were going to be taking more out than they put in or taking out everything and putting in nothing.
	Then that is not what the welfare state is for and it is not how it was sold.
	And it can't possibly operate that way.
	If you, as an insurance company, allow people to burn down their own businesses and then you pay them five times what that business is worth, you will be out of business in about five minutes.
	It can't work that way.
	It can't work that way.
	So you need a population of similar abilities, similar ambitions, similar intelligence, you know, in the bell curve, just in general.
	You need that. And you cannot have a big mountain of money that everyone in the world can come to because that's not what it was for, that's not how it can survive, and that's not how it was sold.
	So I think that there's a form of fraud in all of that.
	I'm sorry for that long sort of response.
	It's a big topic.
	But just the idea, well, you know, Just crossing borders is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	It's like, no, no, no. Coming in and pillaging the infrastructure built up by other people's tax money.
	Coming in knowing ahead of time that you're going to be using the power of the state to transfer people's resources to your pocket from their own families.
	And if they don't pay for what you want, they're going to jail.
	All of that is a far more egregious violation.
	Of the non-aggression principle.
	And of course, yes, it would be great. No welfare state.
	Yeah, I'm much more open. It's like when I was in Hong Kong.
	You should watch my Hong Kong documentary.
	You can find it at freedomain.com forward slash documentaries.
	Hong Kong fight for freedom.
	They have no welfare state and it's very easy to move there.
	And that's totally fine with me.
	Does that sort of make sense? Yeah, I mean, as America was prior to, you know, prior to, say, the 1920s and the establishment of The first federal nose under the tent of Social Security that there was no welfare state.
	It's really not when my ancestors came here, there was no welfare state and they were immigrants.
	And so they just had to work.
	And it's interesting that you draw the...
	You made the distinction about thinking of the existing social fabric as an insurance policy, which I do agree.
	And you combine that with the general...
	Ignorance of the American public of the role of insurance, especially when you bring the other big topic of health care, the difference between health insurance versus health care, right?
	That's another area which was blurred, so it's not crossing of borders, it's pillaging, and it's not medical insurance if you're always going to know you're going to use the doctor versus insuring for those things which have, as they used to be prior to Some of the government regulation of only ensuring people could choose to insure for catastrophic illnesses and pay out of their pocket.
	You know, with their physicians for things which, you know, they were going to have a checkup every year.
	You can't insure against a checkup every year because it's a certainty.
	Well, yeah, I mean, this is one of the reasons why...
	And that analysis, both those two things are the same problem.
	Yeah, and this is one of the reasons...
	Sorry, go ahead....of the concept. Yeah, so this is one of the reasons why governments have such opposition to replacing the welfare state with charity.
	Because you can't buy votes with charity.
	You can buy votes with the welfare state.
	You can dangle all of this money and people all over the world can come and feast on the American taxpayer or the Western taxpayer and you can buy votes with the welfare state.
	But can you imagine some charity calls you up and says, well, you know, there's a whole bunch of people we want to bring in from country XYZ. They don't speak the language.
	They don't have any job skills.
	And they've got a lot of health problems, a lot of dental problems.
	They're going to have a whole bunch of kids statistically, much higher than the average.
	So, you know, can you please donate to this cause?
	Well, I mean, maybe a few people would, some pathological altruists or whatever, but I think most people would be, hmm, no, that's, I don't really see that that's going to reduce the burden of poverty in society as a whole, and I got my own kids, my own family to take care of, and my mom's getting ill, she's going to need some colostomy bags or something, like...
	So the government can force the population for pay, to pay for all of this stuff, the refugees and the migrants and so on.
	But if you had a private charity, I mean, private charity calls people up and asks for that, they'll say, wait, have we solved all of the problem of homelessness in the country already?
	But nope. Oh, do all the children who need health care have it?
	Nope. Do all the people who have dental issues and who are poor, have they had all their teeth fixed?
	Nope! It's like, well, I think we should probably focus on that just a little bit more than we should focus on, you know, 5,000 people from country XYZ because we still have issues in our own country, right?
	So a private charity cannot be leveraged by the state.
	To buy votes and to gerrymander people with bringing people who vote from the left and so on, which is why whenever you say, well, private charity should replace the welfare state, I mean, all of the state-driven demagogues just completely freak out.
	It's like, what do you mean? You're going to take away our power to buy votes with your money?
	That's terrible. That's monstrous.
	Appalling. Can't be allowed.
	Anyway, so I'm going to move on to another caller, but thank you for the question.
	I hope that this helps. That is not my answer there, of course.
	It's not completely definitive, and it's not exhaustive.
	That would be a whole book or a series of books, but that's sort of where my thinking is to start with, and I really do appreciate the call.
	Thanks, Stefan. Thanks, man.
	All right. Should we roll the dice?
	Auto-screening skipped by caller.
	What does this mean? Let's see here.
	Is your name Ian?
	Are you with me, brother?
	Yes, I am here.
	Hello, Stefan. How are you doing?
	Doing well. So I actually called in about 10 minutes ago, and sure enough, your topic is sort of along the lines of what I wanted to kind of, I guess, discuss today.
	Forgive me if I'm not up to speed with where the law is at right now, because I'm not from Michigan, but I saw some things gaining traction online about a law called Dad by Default.
	It's called Dad by Default?
	Yes, Dad by Default.
	And the current structure of sort of the way that they do welfare is for the The mother of children, if she's going to use children to get welfare payments, she has to have a father named for the children.
	So if she puts your name, even if you are not the father, you are required by law by default to pay child support.
	And they have a limited amount of time where you can appeal this a certain number of months, but if you miss The court date, or if you fail to get the notice, or maybe you fail to prepare to show a DNA test during that time period, you're stuck paying child support after that.
	Even if you can prove months later that the child is not yours, you're still on the hook.
	Well, that is...
	Sorry, that's pretty appalling.
	Now, I've got something here. Is this relatively recent?
	I've just looked up something here from 2017.
	Is it more recent than that, do you know?
	Yeah, I've seen a couple videos more recent than that.
	Sort of like panels of unfortunate men who have unfortunately had some type of...
	I mean, maybe some romantic relations with...
	Women who then had a kid and then they just name drop them on some paperwork and then they end up having to pay child support for kids that are not theirs at all.
	Some people are saying that they didn't even have any sexual contact with these women at all.
	No sexual contact? The woman just picked their name out of a hat.
	Hey, I went to high school with this guy!
	Right, exactly. Something like that?
	Yes. Yes.
	Alright, so what have we got?
	That's 2015. And are you a dad by default?
	The child support hustle.
	That sounds scientific.
	Alright, let's see here. Okay, so let's see here.
	This was from 2017 as well.
	So, recently adopted by Detroit, Michigan.
	Dad's by default, a term created by government, but recently adopted by Detroit, Michigan native, Cornell Alexandria.
	Okay, so, let's see here.
	When a man is found to be dad by default in a child's support case, there is a specific protocol that is supposed to take place before the case ever makes its way to a courtroom.
	Okay. The Office of Child Support Enforcement Agency.
	Oh, that's a chillingly postmodernist Dante-esque.
	Sounds very, very scary.
	Very scary. Like, you never want that.
	You never want Oxy in your mailbox.
	Like, that's never going to be a good day at all.
	At all. Can I just get something from the IRS instead?
	Would that be all right? Let's see.
	See, a branch of the Health and Human Services Administration is tasked with overseeing the child support programs nationally.
	A default judgment is a decision made by the tribunal when the defendant fails to respond.
	The failure to respond is only relevant if the defendant has been properly notified about the child support complaint.
	The service process is so essential in a lawsuit that if not performed properly, a lawsuit cannot proceed.
	All right.
	An issue that almost always arises when men are cleared of a dad by default in a child support order can be the amount of the order.
	Okay, so it does sound, unless this has changed, it does sound like they've got to serve you and you've got to reply to this, right?
	I mean... Consider another Michigan resident.
	Oh, here we go. Hang on, hang on.
	I'm so sorry. I keep giving you pauses and then talking over you.
	I apologize for that.
	Child support arrears in any case can be detrimental, but are especially damaging to dads by default when he is forced into debt for a child he did not biologically father.
	The civil rights violation is suffered by men who may have done nothing more than to meet a woman.
	Consider another Michigan resident who is currently being forced to pay nearly $100,000 in child support arrears.
	For a child that he not only did not father, but to a woman that he never had sex with past, present or otherwise.
	So $100,000 of debt without even the 12 minutes of, you know, fun, right?
	There are thousands if not millions of violations to civil rights due process and equal protections to accompany personal horror stories all attributable to the current child support system.
	These situations are reported by biological fathers who have been arrested.
	They are not arrested for willfully failing to pay child support, which is the actual law, but because they were financially unable to pay the exorbitant amount of debt.
	It becomes an even bigger tragedy when a dad by default is arrested for being too poor to pay for the child support debt.
	So yeah, I guess what you're saying is the woman can just say so-and-so was the dad.
	And here it says they've got to find him, they've got to serve him, and so on.
	But if for whatever reason there's no response, then this guy...
	Is on the hook. This guy, you know, being hit for 100,000 US. Maybe he doesn't have that kind of money.
	That's a hell of a lot of money.
	He's hit for that kind of money.
	And then what happens?
	Well, he can't pay it.
	And off to jail he goes for the child of a woman he may never even have had sex with.
	This is the kind of stuff we're talking about, right?
	Yes, yes, that is exactly what I wanted to kind of talk about.
	Oh, I mean, it's absolutely monstrous and kind of inevitable.
	I mean, somebody's got to pay for these kids.
	I had an interesting exchange on Twitter the other day.
	So I retweeted something from a while ago where I was talking about moving children from liabilities to assets has fundamentally reshaped society in a terrible way.
	way because when children are liabilities then a woman needs to find a good provider to pay the bills when child children are transformed from liabilities into assets through the power of the welfare state then women don't need to be responsible in who they choose to be the father of their children right so no who's who's going to pay for the hundred grand it takes to raise a kid who's going to pay well the government sure as hell doesn't want to pay it right i mean they'd they want to collect the money for the welfare state but they don't actually want to hand the money for the welfare state out to the poor.
	I mean, the whole point is to use the poor To raise a trillion dollars and then maybe you pay $200 billion of that to the poor and you keep $800 billion of it for yourself.
	Because it's about 20%, if I remember rightly, that the government pays out to welfare recipients based upon the money they take in for welfare.
	So you don't want to actually give money to the poor based on the welfare state.
	You want to keep that money for yourself.
	And so you'd much rather stiff some working stiff for having a stiffness in vicinity of a woman who later has a child.
	It's absolutely monstrous, of course, if the child is not yours.
	Not only should the man not pay, but if the woman claims that a man is the father of her child and he's not, well, that's fraud.
	And it's a very egregious and monstrous fraud.
	And the man could end up being in jail based upon her accusations.
	And if you, you know, one of the old...
	Ways in which justice should work is if you accuse someone of a crime falsely, then you get the punishment that would have been meted out on him.
	So if you accuse a guy of raping you and he would have got 10 years and it's false and he didn't rape you, then you get 10 years.
	If you accuse him of shoplifting, then whatever, you understand, right?
	So that's the way it should work.
	But of course, the problem is that women who are single moms Have hostages, and those hostages are their children, right?
	And, you know, I'm not saying all single moms do it, you know, when it comes to who pays, right?
	Because there's this weird thing that goes on with women.
	I don't know. I guess it's not weird or whatever.
	Tell me what you think in a sec, right?
	But it's this weird thing that goes on with women, right?
	Because let's say the welfare state is going to get cut.
	Because it is. I mean, it is.
	It's unsustainable, right? The welfare state is going to get stuck.
	And women say, well, how are my children going to eat?
	And, you know, suddenly everybody has to solve this problem.
	And it's like, you know, you're an adult.
	You live in a relatively free society.
	You figure it out, right? Figure it out.
	But there's this thing where women say, well, you know, my child needs this.
	How's my child going to get this if the government doesn't provide it or whatever, right?
	And it's unique to women.
	Because, you know, when there was a war, say, the Second World War or Vietnam War, some guy, he's running a business, right?
	And he gets drafted, right?
	Now, he doesn't just sit there and say, well, who's going to run my business?
	Right? Who's going to fulfill my orders?
	Who's going to deal with my customers?
	Who's going to run the paycheck system?
	Who's going to...
	And people are like, you're an adult male.
	You got drafted. You'll figure it out.
	But women...
	It's, I think, possible to make the argument that having welfare cuts is not really as bad as being drafted and being sent into the Bataan death march and ending up in some John Grisham novel.
	Right? Women can say, well, how's this?
	How are my kids going to get their medicine?
	We don't do that with men.
	When men have problems, like this guy's got $100,000.
	How am I supposed to pay this $100,000?
	I never even had sex with them.
	It's like, oh, well, too bad, man.
	You go to jail. I go to jail?
	Who's going to run my business? We don't give that same, well, we've got to rush in and solve your problems.
	We don't give that to men. We give that to women.
	We don't give that to men.
	For men, it's like, suck it up and figure it out.
	For women, I guess you can say something, the two terms might be related, but that's a weird thing that happens, and this is one of the reasons why, when women have this amount of economic power, when they have that amount of sexual power, when they have this amount of accusatory power, when they have this amount of third-party, get-their-boyfriend-to-beat-someone-up power, plus you give them massive political power through living longer and voting more than men, it's like, sorry, that's just too much power.
	That's just too much power.
	It corrupts and it infantilizes.
	And, you know, if a woman had sex with some guy or she doesn't even know who the father...
	Of her child is?
	She would give a false name.
	You know, I guess she...
	She picks the richest guy!
	She doesn't know who, so she picks who would be the best to provide, I guess.
	Yeah, who's got some money? Even if he wasn't even in full.
	Yeah, who pulled up in a car that wasn't seven different colors?
	Who had a nice pair of unscuffed boots?
	Who had a tie on?
	Yeah, that's the dad.
	Yeah, no, it's monstrous.
	You know, you sort of said that society reacts to women differently, and I'm all for, you know, if you're a man and you are going to play a dangerous game and you're going to, you know, get a woman pregnant, I think that you should bear some financial responsibility.
	You know, I'm pro-child support.
	You know, I think that You know, you made the baby, you need to take care of it.
	But I think that, like you're saying, the accusatory power is way out of proportion there.
	Well, okay, but hang on, hang on.
	Hang on. But the woman has the right to give up her parental obligations, right?
	She can get an abortion.
	She can put the child up for adoption.
	She can, like any number of things, right?
	So the woman has the perfect right to give up the child and she doesn't even need to go through a formal process.
	Like the woman can literally take her child, she can take her baby to the police station.
	She can take it to a fire station.
	She can leave it on a doorstep.
	She can hang it from a tree in a basket so it shows up in a nursery rhyme, right?
	The woman can just wander in to any state body Hand over her kid, and the kid will be taken, and there'll be no negative repercussions, no questions asked, right?
	So she can terminate either the pregnancy or her parental obligations with no input from the man, right?
	Pretty much, yeah. So why don't men have the same right?
	Well, I guess... I guess it doesn't come out of men at the end of the day.
	I guess biologically, we're kind of maybe limited But I know what you're saying.
	It's kind of unfair legally.
	It doesn't seem... Yeah, legally.
	If the woman can terminate the entire parental situation with no input from the man, then, you know, there's a pretty strong case to be made that a man should be able to sign a piece of paper that says, I give up all parental rights and obligations in the same way that the woman can do.
	Now, if you're going to say, well, women should have different rights than men, okay, well, that's a different argument, but then let's not pretend we're aiming for any kind of equality here.
	That's the thin edge of the wedge.
	Okay, well... As you say, it comes out of the woman.
	So they should be able to terminate parental responsibilities with no repercussions, no questions asked.
	But the man is on the hook should she decide to keep it without his choice, without his input, maybe even without his sperm.
	It's like, okay, well, you can make that case.
	But then let's not pretend we're aiming for it.
	Then you can't complain about the wage gap, right?
	Because then it's like we're not aiming for any kind of equality here.
	And once we've thrown equality out the window...
	Then it gives people a huge sense of relief, or maybe not for the guy who gets hit with a $100 sperm jacking bill or whatever, $100,000 sperm jacking bill.
	But let's at least say, okay, well, so we're not aiming for any kind of equality here.
	Let's not pretend that we are, in which case it's like, well, there are fewer female engineers than male.
	It's like, yeah, but you all can terminate parental responsibility, no problem.
	Men can't. So, you know, it balances out.
	Yeah, at the end of the day, it does.
	Yeah, it's really rough.
	In some of those situations, I just wanted to touch on briefly.
	Some of the men were moving from different addresses.
	A lot of people may not have their paperwork up to date, and then they miss the notice, or they're in prison.
	Or, you know, they have no knowledge of the woman even doing that, and then they get hit.
	Yeah, I think that's fightable if they weren't served.
	I think if you are served, for God's sakes, call a lawyer and get it sorted out, because, yeah, as you point out.
	Now, I mean, false paternity is just about the worst thing that you can do to a man.
	It's so incredibly, unbelievably destructive.
	Yeah. So that's a whole other topic.
	But yeah, I mean, this stuff is dangerous and it's out there.
	You know, here's the thing.
	Here's the plus that can come out of this, right?
	You know, maybe I'm a bit too much of an optimist.
	I'm always looking for the upside, right?
	But here's the plus that can come out of it.
	For God's sake, stop hanging around any kind of social circle where this might happen.
	Like, just, you know...
	You know how they have these inflatable...
	Life vests, right? Like you're sinking or whatever.
	You pull it and it just fills with air and pops you up to the surface, right?
	So if you're down here in this grotto-based, tree-root, dank, glowing crystal underworld where this is even remotely possible, get philosophy, listen to this show, elevate the hell out of yourself and pull the damn ripcord on your life vest so that you can float up to the surface.
	So that you're dealing with sane and decent human beings.
	I'm not blaming the victims here, but don't even be in the social circle or the environment of people who would even consider doing something like this.
	You say, well, those women are everywhere.
	It's like, no, they're not. No, they're really not.
	It's a cautionary tale about all of your social environments and how to...
	Hopefully get the hell away from people who would do anything like this.
	Alright, well thanks for the call. I really, really do appreciate it.
	I'm afraid I'm dropping you because somebody wants to talk about sexual fetishes.
	Hello, you're on the air. You do in fact have my attention.
	Can you hear me? I don't want this to be the worst transcription error ever known to man.
	Can you hear me? Caller, I just put you on the line.
	Hello? Hi, how you doing?
	You actually picked me. I certainly did.
	Are you currently in a furry suit?
	Oh, thank you. No, nothing like that.
	Okay, what's on your mind? Oh my god, what isn't on my mind these days, Steph?
	It's very nice to talk to you. Happy holidays.
	Thank you very much. I will beg you to narrow it down just a smidge, because, you know, time is pressing.
	But go on. Okay.
	First of all... I know this is a little off topic, but I tried using your subscriber phone number and the PIN number didn't work.
	I just want to let you know that. I left a message in the comments.
	Oh, my apologies. I will check that out.
	Yeah, so for those who don't know, Subscribestar.com forward slash free domain.
	I put out early shows there, some exclusive shows there, and you also get a private pin for the call-in show, which gets you to the head of the queue.
	And so please, please help out the show at freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	It gets you straight there, or you can go to Subscribestar.com forward slash freedomain.
	And check it out there. I'm so sorry about that.
	I'm glad we got through to you.
	And thank you, of course, for your support.
	And I'm all ears. Can you call me Trevor?
	It's an alias because it's kind of, you know, something embarrassing.
	Okay, so I figured I've got a lot on my mind these days with everything, but I was wondering maybe if you'd like to take a stab at trying to diagnose somewhat bizarre but fetish, sexual fetishes.
	It wouldn't be the first time.
	Hopefully it won't be the last.
	So, yes, go for it, man.
	Anyway, I'm very, very lucky in a lot of ways because I'm not into furries or anything like that.
	Oh, jeez, it's kind of embarrassing.
	I've only told very few people of this, ladies in my life, but it's essentially the first one would be, and I guess I'm very lucky that I like to wear suits, shirts, and ties.
	I look very, very good, and I get a sexual rush from that.
	Not only that, I'm very, very, very attracted to women that wear shirts and ties.
	Oh, you're attracted to women.
	Sorry, I thought you were kind of trolling me a bit there, like my sexual fetish is to dress in clothes that women find very attractive.
	I don't think that's a fetish.
	I think that's just common sense.
	I find it attractive.
	So you find it attractive when a woman is wearing a man's suit.
	Is that right? Well, it's mostly centered around the shirt and tie.
	Okay. Okay. Is it done up like full-on, neck-choking, half-news, 50s Don Draper style, or is it kind of half-undone, shirt kind of open, tie hanging?
	No, it's more like done up.
	Definitely done up. Okay.
	Does it matter the length of the woman's hair?
	Not really. I prefer, you know, medium to long hair.
	Yeah, okay. No, I definitely, I kind of know where you're going with this, but it's, It's definitely the feminine look.
	If you could take the feminized look of the shirt, suit, tie thing.
	Men in suits and shirts do not turn me on at all.
	I get that.
	It's only women, yeah.
	And is there a jacket component required?
	Or is it like a Phil Collins album, like no jacket required for this turn-on?
	Nope. It's all just different variations of that.
	And when did you first notice this?
	Adolescence. Yeah.
	Probably before puberty.
	Before puberty? Yeah, definitely.
	The other thing, I want to add on to it to make this even more bizarre and complicated.
	Dude, I know you got the bizarre thing going and all that.
	Listen, nothing human is alien to me.
	That's totally fine.
	It's totally in my wheelhouse.
	You're a human being.
	You have this particular preference.
	It's not like I need to strangle a carp fish to get off.
	This is just visual and it's not as freaky as you think, at least from my perspective.
	So go for it. It's definitely unique.
	It's not the worst fetish someone could have, that's for sure.
	But on top of that, I've also been into...
	I also like bondage.
	So mix that with BDSM. Okay, so hang on.
	You said something before bondage.
	Was it light select bondage, or what was that?
	I didn't quite catch that phrase. Oh, just more like light BDSM bondage.
	Not really... Not leather, not like whips, not...
	Anything too crazy, like latex, but just like, you know, light to medium bondage.
	Do you mean like tying someone to the headboard with stockings, that kind of stuff?
	Oh, well, I've got more equipment than that, but yeah, it could be variations of just rope.
	Amateur, right? Okay, got it.
	Okay, so it's light bondage, but without pain, but just with restraint, is that right?
	Yeah, yeah. I'm not into spanking, but I do have a girlfriend.
	She is totally compatible with me.
	I love her very much. And she's into the same things I am.
	Very lucky, very fortunate.
	But yeah, she likes it a little rough.
	A lot of women tend to do that.
	I've never met one, but I've heard tell.
	I've honestly never met a woman in that way inclined, but I've heard tell and I'm perfectly willing to accept it.
	But the rough stuff is not, again, it's not any pain inflection or anything, it's just restraint and that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Okay, so... Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	I don't want to have premature elaboration on this, so if there's anything else that you wanted to mention, I'm happy to hear.
	You sly guy.
	And I really like, I guess on top of the bondage thing, I really like ball gags as well.
	You know what ball gags are? I have a feeling we're slowly escalating to a scene out of Pulp Fiction here.
	So, okay, one more thing.
	Giant cranes.
	I did not enjoy watching that.
	Okay, a ball gag.
	I don't really know much about that.
	What's the story with that? You put a rubber ball in your mouth and strap it around so you're gagged and I like the way it looks and the way it feels.
	But that kind of goes in with the BDSM part.
	But that's not painful. It's just inhibiting, I suppose.
	It's sort of like the taking a hard pass on aural there.
	Okay, got it, got it. Anything else?
	Now's the time to open the closet wide.
	We got bondage, suits, ball gag.
	What else? That's the big three, I'd say.
	Yeah, nothing else. Yeah, okay.
	Got it, got it. Very tame.
	Well, you know, I'm not going to put this on a sliding scale, but, you know, it does not seem like it's nothing that's going to get you arrested in Idaho.
	So, all right.
	No, no. I'm very fortunate in that respect.
	Nothing illegal, nothing weird, nothing, you know, with fecal play or gross shit like that.
	Yeah, let's not even, in our mind's eye, go to that.
	I believe toilet trained at gunpoint German dungeon place.
	Okay, so tell me a little bit about your parents' relationship.
	Did they get along well?
	Did they fight? Was it aggressive?
	Was it peaceful? What was the story?
	Not great.
	I'm honestly surprised I didn't get divorced.
	My dad was very tense a lot of times.
	My mom was very sort of passive, but the phrase like kind of walking around on eggshells around my dad was very common.
	Right. Go ahead.
	Well, what would the eggshells?
	What would the landmines or the pressure points for them in terms of conflict?
	I guess my dad was...
	He held a lot of pain throughout his life.
	He had depression.
	His mood would be up and down.
	He would be hypocritical.
	I don't really know if I really loved him because of his...
	Was he sarcastic and stuff like that?
	No, not sarcastic.
	Just mean-spirited.
	He would be in a bad mood, but he wouldn't realize how that affected the family.
	Well, do you think he didn't realize it, or he did realize it, but didn't mind or kind of enjoyed it?
	I don't think he enjoyed it.
	I don't know how much control he had over it.
	So he wasn't sadistic that way, like enjoyed causing people discomfort through his bad mood?
	No. No, I wouldn't call it sadistic, no.
	I think he was in a lot of pain, and that pain came out.
	Why was he in pain? He would get beaten down and...
	Pardon me? Why was he in so much pain, do you think?
	I would imagine, based on the things I've learned in the last couple of years, that it definitely had something to do with his relationship with his mother.
	I don't think my grandmother was particularly...
	I need you to just in the interest of time you're giving me like with this kind of stuff I don't think she was a super one like just give me the straight-up goods like was she was she mean was she vicious just I only saw her good side and so did my mom but I I do I don't believe she was a loving the kind of loving mother that you know any young man needs And I think he held a lot of resentment.
	I think perhaps that his hypocritical and angry nature was passed on from her to him.
	But what evidence do you have that she was that way?
	I'm not like a court of law thing, but you have this perspective, and I'm not sure where it comes from.
	Yes. I believe it comes from just the analysis of...
	How my father behaved.
	Like, where did he learn this behavior?
	Oh, so his behavior is like the shadow cast by her behavior, but you didn't see her behavior directly, but you know there's something there because there's a shadow.
	Is that right? That would probably be the most accurate.
	Because remember, like, she loved me, loved my brother, loved my mom even.
	But I think perhaps in the past she wasn't very nice to my father, but she had a very positive and tried to maintain a very positive relationship with my mom.
	Was your father controlling?
	Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
	What do you mean? Like, a little bit compared to what?
	Or what were the examples of his controlling side?
	When it comes to, like, maintaining, like, a clean house or doing a job well done or to, like, nothing really lazy.
	It was, like, his way or the highway.
	Like, if he wanted to use the computer, you got to get off the computer.
	Right. And was he sort of bossy bullying towards your mom because you said she was kind of passive and walked on eggshells?
	Yeah, I'd say it was more of a bullying kind of thing.
	Not necessarily bullying, but you don't know what kind of mood he was in and if he was going to be rational or not.
	He had a lot of anger and that got passed down to me.
	I believe as well, because I have depression as well.
	I take medication for depression, full disclosure.
	All right. And did your father tell your mom to shut up a lot?
	Or be quiet or stop talking or be silent or...
	No.
	Okay. No.
	So when they would get into conflicts...
	How would she handle it?
	Like if he's in a bad mood and he's criticizing, there's a spot on the carpet, or this glass is not clean, or nothing's in its proper place, or whatever he's doing, right?
	Like how would your mom react to it?
	Right. I'd describe my father's behavior as passive-aggressive in a lot of cases, and her reaction would be being hurt.
	Sometimes if it got extreme, she would retaliate.
	Nothing too severe but kind of like shouting and fighting and things like that.
	It would just be like a fight and then it'd be just tense, very tense in the house for days at a time.
	And then things would relax and then we'd think everything was okay and then eventually there'd be some other outside force that was probably my dad's life that, you know, would trigger a bad mood and then it would, you know, get pushed onto the family.
	Now, when she retaliated, though, she would retaliate verbally fighting back, right?
	Well, one specific instance or two I can think of was my dad was sitting, actually right where I am right now, and he was going through mail, and he was in a bad mood, and my mom was sitting right across, and he started, like, throwing mail at her.
	Like, literally throwing envelopes.
	In terms of the double use of the word mail, that's actually quite powerful.
	Oh my God. My God.
	That's why you remember it so much, right?
	I doubt it. It's just one of the moments where he threw something and then she said, don't do that again.
	And then he did it again. Yeah.
	There was another moment when, I remember he was in the washroom and I don't exactly what it escalated to, but I remember hearing some like, some, some Fighting kind of noises and I came around the corner and I had this like moment of being a man and I looked at them and I said, what is going on here?
	And I was just a kid and they had gotten to like a physical push fight and she had like kind of scuffed her waist against one of the like wall banister kind of things.
	That was probably the extent of the physical fighting.
	He never like Hit or beat.
	There wasn't anything like that.
	Right, right. No, he's a vocal guy.
	Yeah, it was more of this negative presence of just someone who's in a bad mood and...
	Did your mother's...
	Sorry to interrupt. Did they stay married?
	They did, but it might be important.
	It may or may not be important, but...
	Steph, five years ago, he actually took his life.
	Oh my gosh. He hung himself.
	Yeah. I was the one to come home from work and find him.
	How old was he?
	65, I believe.
	66, something like that.
	Oh, and you found him.
	And you said that you're in the same spot now, like you're living in the same house?
	Yes. I'm so sorry, man.
	I moved out. Yeah, I know.
	I appreciate that stuff.
	It does upset me a little bit, but he was in a lot of pain.
	Yeah, well, some of it self-inflicted.
	Yeah, guaranteed.
	But his body was malfunctioning for years.
	And when I say malfunctioning, I mean things like he had Crohn's disease for a very long time.
	Oh yeah, I know someone with that.
	That's a hell of a thing.
	That's like demonic possession of your intestine.
	It's horrible. He said, yeah, he had multiple operations to have parts of his intestines removed because they were eating itself.
	Right. And he got osteoporosis in his older age and I think he was getting some cancer in his ear.
	He was on all sorts of medications.
	His bladder stopped functioning and he had to wear a catheter.
	I think that really affected him.
	Like a 24-hour catheter all the time.
	So he was just not in a good place.
	He was in a lot of pain. Was he like an unhealthy guy over the course of his life?
	Like, did he smoke, drink, no exercise, or what?
	He wasn't morbidly obese or anything like that.
	He did do a little bit of wine drinking for a couple of years, but he wasn't an alcoholic.
	And he smoked a little bit like all young people do in like the 70s and 80s, but he never smoked again.
	So, no, I almost want to theorize that a lot of his physical pain was a manifestation of his spiritual pain.
	Well, even when he was younger, if he had Crohn's, I mean, that's chronic pain, right?
	I mean, it's nasty pain, too.
	Yeah, it's terrible, and it can hit anyone at any time.
	They don't know how it happens or how to treat it.
	It's insane. It's an insane disease.
	It doesn't make any sense. And I think my dad felt very victimized.
	He felt like, you know, one of the people that God chose to beat down until they were nothing.
	And he was an atheist, by the way.
	Let me point that out as well.
	Okay, so with all due respect to the horrible tragedy of your dad, let's get to your ball gag.
	I know this is like not the easiest transition to make, and I apologize for the jarring nature of it, but let's make sure we can get to that.
	So, did your mom's fighting back or retaliating, did it ever solve anything or did it make things worse?
	I think it kept the status quo.
	I don't think there was any, there was like a little bit of improvements and a little bit of, you know, it was like a sine wave, like it would go up and down.
	It wouldn't go too, too extreme in any directions.
	Okay, so let me ask you this.
	Your dad's crouching and grumping around and your mom kind of blows up at him, let's say, right?
	Or she gets, she retaliates.
	How did you feel as a child in the moment?
	Because you said your mom was passive a lot of times, right?
	So there were times when she fought back.
	How did you feel about her fighting back?
	So she'd fight back and would you sit there and say, oh good, he's going to get a taste of his own medicine?
	Or did you sit there and say, oh man, this is terrible, he's just going to make things worse?
	Or was it something else?
	No, I'd say it was more the second category of just like, my parents are fighting.
	This is hurting my soul.
	This is not good. I know something's wrong.
	Right. So you kind of wanted your mom to hold her tongue, I guess, if it wasn't really going to solve anything and it was just going to make things more tense for a while, right?
	No, no, don't let me put a single syllable in your mouth.
	Like, tell me if I'm wrong.
	I'm not, you know, I don't want you to, obviously, you know, don't comply with me, for heaven's sakes, right?
	I never looked at it that way.
	But you said it made the house tense, right?
	It made the house tense when your mom fought back, but it didn't change anything, right?
	Because, I mean, she couldn't fix my dad.
	No, no, of course, of course.
	Right. Now, tell me about the moment when you said, you heard your parents fighting in the other room, and you came in and you said, like, I was just a boy, and you were kind of doing a man's job in a way to try and stop the fighting, right?
	Right. Correct, yeah.
	How old were you then? I had to put on my man face and just, oh jeez, I wish I could say.
	It must have been around my early teens, something around that, yeah.
	Early to mid-teens.
	And how did that play out?
	It was funny because it was almost like a teacher catching two kids fighting, and they both try and explain themselves.
	It was his, he started it really okay.
	Yeah, like, he pushed me like this, and that was basically it.
	It was a very long conversation, but that would be the way I would describe it.
	Like, I caught two kids fighting.
	What did your father do for a living?
	Well, he was, in the last years of his life, he was an independent entrepreneur.
	He did body work on vehicles.
	He moved, like, dents and imperfections and body panels, automobiles and cars.
	Mm-hmm. But he had been retired for a couple years because of his health problems before he died.
	And when you were a kid, what did he do?
	Oh, he did the body work.
	Oh, the body work. Okay, so he himself didn't wear a suit, but what did your, I assume, what did your mom do?
	My mom is in banking, or wasn't banking.
	She's retired, but she worked for the bank.
	And did you visit her at work?
	I mean, I assume you did from time to time.
	Probably wasn't too common, but you would see her at the bank, right?
	Yeah, sure. Now, what did you think of the banking environment?
	Don't worry, this is all going to make sense, I think.
	I hope. Cross your fingers, right?
	Otherwise, I'm just tormenting you, and you might enjoy that.
	Just keep digging. Yeah, yeah.
	So, when you would visit your mom at the bank, how did the environment strike you?
	Was it good, bad, indifferent?
	What did you think? Pretty indifferent.
	Yeah. It was very kind of boring being in a bank because you're like, what do I do here?
	There's nothing to do. Right.
	Yeah, mostly just indifferent, yeah.
	Did you know anyone at your mom's bank?
	Or was it, you know, just, here kid, here's a comic or something?
	What do you mean by know?
	Like her co-workers or friends?
	Co-worker or boss or, you know, anyone at the bank that you might have known as a kid?
	Well... She's very friendly and whatnot.
	Of course, I'd meet other people she worked with, sure.
	They all knew each other by name.
	She still maintained friendships with several of these people.
	Was your mom different in the banking environment than she was at home?
	Because you said she's kind of friendly in the bank, but at home she's kind of tense, right?
	Yeah. From what I understand, she was very, very competent and an excellent asset to any workplace business.
	That had her. Incredibly competent.
	Okay, this is really fascinating, right?
	So your dad is all like, you've got to do a good job, or you've got to be competent.
	But he was hammering out dents in a car, and she was doing some pretty high-level banking, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	So your mother, professionally...
	Let's not go high-level.
	Let's say like mid-level to...
	No, no, no. Higher level than your dad hammering on a car, right?
	Yeah. So you understand that in your parents' relationship, your mom wore the suit?
	Yes. Yes, in a manner of speaking, sure.
	She didn't really wear business suits, per se.
	No, I get that. She wore dresses and things like that, but yeah.
	So, do you get the connection back to where we started?
	Hit me. I mean, that's all right.
	We're a long way away. So in your parents' relationship, your mom wore the suit.
	And what do you like to see a woman in?
	Like, suit, shirt, tie.
	Yeah. I wouldn't want to see my mom in that, though.
	No, I get all that.
	I understand. Listen, I know that.
	I'm not Freudian that way at all.
	At all. I'm not talking about that.
	I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about, though...
	I just want to make it clear for your listeners.
	Yeah, listen, and I'm a billion miles away from that, so I'm not talking about anything Oedipal or anything like that.
	What I'm talking about, though, is that our parents imprint upon us sexual success.
	Right, so in other words, your father, by having you, is your primary programming for what a successful male is like, and your mother, by having you, is your primary programming for what a sexually successful female.
	It doesn't mean that you want to sleep with your mother, it just means that they are your primary examples of what it means to achieve reproductive success, which is kind of what we're here for, right?
	Okay, I'm following you. Okay, so when I'm talking about that, I'm not talking about you wanting to see your mom in a business suit at all, right?
	I'm not. Certainly not.
	Moving on. Right, but the fact that your mother was in a suit-rich environment or was in a suited environment and your dad was quite the opposite, he was total blue-collar, right?
	Oh, definitely. Right.
	So the fact that you would find a woman sexually attractive...
	To see in a suit and tie when your mother wore, somewhat metaphorically but also somewhat practically, the suit and tie in the relationship with your father is very interesting because...
	And we're getting to the ball gag in a second.
	I wasn't sure I was going to say that sentence tonight, but I am, because, you know, follow the show where the show goes, right?
	So your mother...
	Had two lives, professionally and personally, right?
	So, in the bank, she was competent and positive, right?
	Well-respected, friendly, people liked her, and she obviously was able to be assertive in her job because you can't even do mid-level banking without being assertive, right?
	Certainly. Yes, yes, yes.
	So, I bet you really liked that, Mom.
	And I bet you wanted more of that mom at home.
	But I never thought of it like that.
	But if your mom was that way at home, then there would be more conflict with your dad that wouldn't resolve anything, right?
	I'm following you.
	So at home...
	At work, you found your mother in the suit environment very attractive.
	And again, I'm not talking sexually.
	It's just like, that's an attractive personality.
	People like her. She's friendly.
	She's successful. She's positive.
	She's assertive. She's respected, right?
	You like that. But at home, you really need her to shut up, right?
	Because it's just pointless fights.
	Now, what does a ball gag ensure that a woman is not going to do, other than the aforementioned joke?
	She's not going to talk, right?
	So you have a need for your mom to not talk at home.
	In other words...
	When your mother is not talking or fighting back or retaliating against your dad, you can relax more, right?
	You can feel more safe and secure when your mother is not going to start a fight with your dad.
	Right. And you like putting a ball gag in a woman's mouth.
	God, I'm so stupid.
	No, listen, that's hard stuff, man.
	I just make it look easy.
	But it's hard, right?
	It's hard, baby!
	It is, right?
	It's hard to see these things in ourselves.
	Yeah.
	Your father was controlling, and you like bondage.
	Because when you're tying someone up, you're in control.
	So, sexuality... Listen, this is my thoughts, right?
	So, obviously don't let me tell you anything that goes against your experience or your ideas, but I'll make the case here.
	For men, I think for women too, sexuality occurs when we feel safe.
	Or... Now, safe doesn't...
	I mean, I get that some people who like, you know, ball clamps and hot wax on the nipples and stuff like that or whatever, but...
	We're just talking from your standpoint, sexuality generally is at its best when you or a person is relaxed and able to play.
	I mean, adult sexuality is a form of play, right?
	So the question is, what is it that's going to make you feel the most relaxed?
	Well, I bet you felt pretty relaxed when you were at the bank with your mom, because your dad wasn't around and your mom was being great, right?
	So I think that suits help you feel relaxed.
	I think that you feel relaxed when a woman isn't going to start a problem, in which case the ball gag is going to help you feel relaxed.
	And I think you feel relaxed when you're in control because that's what your dad did.
	Your dad would be in control and this would be his way of making himself feel secure or safe or whatever, right?
	So if you look at this sort of trinity of bondage...
	A woman in a bank suit, so to speak, and a ball gag, I think these are all things that reduce the anxiety of your pretty wretched childhood in this situation.
	And that allows you to play.
	It allows you to feel safe and secure enough that you can have fun, which is outside of procreation, kind of the point of sex, right?
	Adult sex, right? So if you look at these particular situations, I think that they remove stimulus that were negative from your childhood and give you a sense of security and play and fun and, in a sense, safety that...
	significantly enhances or maybe even just makes possible your sexual response that's pretty amazing Pretty fascinating. Tell me how it lands for you, and I'm not asking you, you don't have to confirm.
	I mean, I could be completely off-key here, but that's the stuff that came up for me.
	Does it sort of sit with you like it's something worth exploring or interesting?
	Of course, the interesting question would be what's going on with your girlfriend, that this is how she ends up being in a place where she feels safe enough to play.
	But how does it sort of land for you, this possibility?
	It's definitely a very, very interesting perspective.
	I think I think there might be some relevance to it.
	I think it's very interesting.
	It's something I have to, like, think about.
	Right. Okay, good.
	Well, good. Okay, as long as it...
	I can see the relationship, yeah.
	And then I would, you know, the reason why I think this is important to talk about, and listen, I get this is really, really tough stuff to bring up, and I really appreciate that you're doing it, because here's the thing.
	I would look elsewhere in your life, my friend, and say, okay...
	Where do I feel safe to play?
	Where do I feel safe and secure enough to enjoy myself, to have fun?
	And given that you grew up with a moody son of a bitch, controlling, aggressive, bullying, and self-righteous when it comes to competence, who was kind of snuffing the life candle out on his wife, given that she had to escape to work to feel competent and respected and, so to speak, loved...
	You had it, you know, really rough, stressful, difficult growing up.
	And if you need these particular rituals to feel safe based upon your history and you said that you are taking meds for depression, you feel you have depression, my question would be, okay, where else in your life do you not feel secure enough to play?
	Because we're really at our best when we play.
	You know, when I'm doing this show, it's a form of play.
	I mean, I play like children play, which is very seriously and with the intent to learn and to instruct and all of that.
	but in your life I guess my question would be where do you feel safe and secure and accepted enough that you can allow yourself to play which is where not just happiness but I think the most productivity in life comes comes out and I guess that's a question do you do you have that in your life or do you think maybe that's why you feel some of this depression I don't think I have a an immediate answer for that I think My safe space is my bedroom.
	Right. My bed and my little nest.
	Right. Right.
	I think that you need...
	Yeah, see, how is it that people control us?
	Well, the way that people control us is they make us feel unsafe.
	Right. I mean, you know, all of this social media censorship and deep laughing is just to make people feel jumpy.
	I mean, I refuse to surrender the joy in what it is that I'm doing out of this sense of jumpiness or imminent erasure from whatever it is.
	Like, I can't... Because then I've lost, right?
	Then they've taken away my safe space.
	They've taken away my fun.
	And I can't really be that productive.
	And I just won't.
	Like, I won't. I won't do that.
	I won't surrender that.
	You have to try and maintain as much as possible.
	And it can be a challenge. And there are real dangers and threats out there.
	So I'm not, you know, again saying any of that.
	But I think you really do need to find a way and arrange a life and arrange your environment so that you can feel safe enough to really play.
	Because that's where the real happiness I think and real productivity and creativity in life is.
	And if you play seriously enough and you play strongly enough it's hard to think that life is meaningless.
	Like nobody in the midst of a great orgasm thinks, huh, I wonder if there's any meaning or purpose to life.
	You know what I mean? Or when you've had a great idea or you've solved a difficult problem and you get those endorphins or whatever, right?
	Meaning or the pursuit of meaning is what we use to fill...
	The canyon of unhappiness.
	We say, oh, well, if I can find meaning.
	And it's like, well, no, but the problem is that a lack of meaning, which I think is often associated with depression, a lack of meaning is a symptom of a lack of play.
	You know, when my daughter and I, if I'm chasing my daughter around the place and she likes being dragged along the floor and trying to grab onto the sides of walls and I pull her and stuff, like, we don't sit there when we're doing that and giggling hysterically.
	We don't sit there and say, yes, but is there any meaning to all of this?
	You know, it didn't make any sense.
	We're really enjoying ourselves.
	When I'm doing shows and enjoying myself, or even if the shows are difficult, I never sort of sit there and say, is there a meaning to this?
	Because you don't need meaning when you have happiness.
	And you get happiness, I think, through play.
	And you get play through a sense of security.
	Which is why, you know, all totalitarian regimes try and make you feel insecure at all times.
	That's the purpose of this, you know, woke culture, these attack mobs, this cancel culture.
	It's all to make you feel jumpy and nervous so you can't be creative.
	So, if you have these rituals, bondage, the woman in the suit and the ball gag and so on, that give you a sense of play in your bedroom, then I think that the purpose to this...
	The conversation, I hope, is for you to start looking, and everyone out there, start looking in your life and say, okay, where am I too nervous to play?
	Where am I too nervous to self-express?
	Where am I too nervous to, quote, let down my guard and be honest and all of that?
	And if you can identify those places and find ways to achieve some kind of security to the point where you can play, the playing gives you joy, and the joy erases your need for meaning, and I think helps a lot with depression.
	I think my depression is a whole other call-in show.
	Okay. Well, I'm certainly happy to chat with you about that, and I really do appreciate everyone's time.
	I'm sorry we did not get to everyone.
	Once again, the demand and the supply are not matching up perfectly, but I really do appreciate everyone's time.
	Thank you so much. I will certainly talk to you guys before we get to the end of the year.
	It is the 27th Of December 2019.
	Thank you everyone so much. Great pleasure chatting with you guys.
	A great honor to do this with you in the world.
	Don't forget to freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	Massively appreciated, my friends.
	It's been an honor and a great pleasure.
	I'll talk to you soon.
	Thank you very much, Steph.
	Thank you.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

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